Every few weeks, someone will look at me and then do a double-take as if they know me, when they really haven't ever seen me before.
"Are you ..." they will start to ask.
"James Taylor?" I fill in and they usually admit that's who they mistook me for. They are not alone. James Taylor's own brother, Livingston Taylor, freaked out one time when I walked in on one of his shows.
So this past Sunday afternoon, as we biked down the Silver Comet Trail, I mentioned to my wife Jan that James was playing that night at Chastain Park.
"I've never seen him," she said.
Even though I figured she looks at him almost every day in her very own house, I offered to go scalp some tickets to the sold-out show.
I'm not exactly sure when this started, but I believe it was about the time James and I started to lose our hair – well, maybe lost almost all of our hair would be more accurate. I may have looked like him when his famous Sweet Baby James album came out in February 1970. When I went off to boarding school for 9th grade that fall, that album spent a great deal of time on my turntable in my dorm room. If you look at his album cover photo and then my photo a year or two later, there is not that much resemblance ... is there? But later, in my mid-30s, when there was no hair on top of my head, I noticed there was none on top of James' head either.
A few years later, I was serving as promotion manager at The Charlotte Observer and we co-sponsored lots of events with radio station WRFX. When they hosted their anniversary party, they booked Livingston Taylor to play and invited me.
In between sets, I noticed he wandered just past me to an empty back barroom, so I waited a few minutes and then poked my head in the door. The room was empty, except for a lone Livingston Taylor, sitting at the bar, enjoying a drink and a smoke, of some kind. He froze.
"Sorry," I began, "I didn't mean to disturb you. I just wanted to say I was really enjoying your show."
"Oh, no problem," he said. "Thanks."
"Hey, it's kind of funny, but people tell me all the time I look like your brother, James."
"I know," Livingston said. "You freaked me out when you first walked in. I thought it was him."
A few years later, I went to hear a band named Gurufish at Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta. A few songs into their first set, a guy walked up to me and said, "Hey, James Taylor, I'm the manager of the band and I just wanted to thank you for coming out to hear the band. Can I buy you a beer?"
Okay, what was I supposed to do? If I said I wasn't James Taylor, he would have been disappointed. If I played along, he gets to tell the band on break that he got James Taylor to come see them. And besides, I was getting a free beer out of the deal.
My friend, Charles Driebe, who's a music lawyer, suggested I should get some business cards to keep in my wallet that just say, "J.T."
When a friend invited me at the last minute to hear James playing at Chastain 10 years ago when I was writing a monthly column for my monthly newspapers, now known as Atlanta INtown Paper, I called up the show's producer and asked if I could introduce James on stage by walking out to great applause and announcing to the crowd, "I'm not James Taylor." And then, when the crowd was confused, I would say, "But this IS James Taylor." I told them I would give them generous exposure in my column.
They actually considered it and told me they would contact James' manager and get back with me. They called an hour later and said if I had called a couple of days before, they could have arranged it.
Jan has seen photos of James Taylor and she doesn't think we look alike. So after our bike ride last Sunday,
I hustled out to Chastain Park 30 minutes before the show and found some tickets for sale. I ended up buying two tickets at a table near the stage. I raced home, and Jan and I made it to the table at 7:59pm. A minute later, I, er, James walked out on the stage to great cheering. We snapped a few photos for history's sake. I never did get close enough to talk with my lookalike, but his image was projected on the big screen for the sold-out crowd to see. Unbeknownst to me (until later), a table of friends and clients were laughing all night about how "Schroder was playing well tonight!"
After the show, as Jan and I packed up our cooler to leave, a guy wandered over from a table next to us.
"Hey, I just have to ask, are you James Taylor's brother?"
Okay, what was I supposed to do?
Actually, I told the truth. After all, he didn't have a beer left to offer me.
Photos: Above: Sweet Baby James cover, me at 16, Lower: Me near stage at Chastain with James playing. James on stage at Chastain.
Nice column on JT. Love the spontaneous action to attend concert. I'm a firm believer that unplanned trips or activities are often the most rewarding.
I am a huge fan of JT. I saw him twice in 2006. The first time during his "One Man Band" tour when he played in Columbus, GA. The second time in Portland, Maine, when my wife and I traveled for our 10th anniversary. It was her first time seeing JT in concert and she loved it.
One of my favorite lines from the 70s troubadour is: “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. Since we’re only here for a while, might as well show some style.” What a great life motto to live by!
An interesting aside involves Atlanta singer-songwriter Matthew Kahler who sounds just like JT. People used tell him that all the time, and from my limited observations, Kahler was kind to random fans who would approach him and comment on his "JT voice."
It's not a bad person to be compared to. And for the record, you do look like Sweet James...
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Posted by: John Carroll | June 23, 2008 at 12:07 AM